• Welcome to the new forum! We upgraded our forum software with a host of new boards, capabilities and features. It is also more secure.
    Jump in and join the conversation! You can learn more about the upgrade and new features here.

Sanitation

Michael

New Forum Member
Joined
Sep 8, 2014
Messages
2
Reaction score
0
I have been using StarSan as a sanitizer which has worked well. I have recently moved to an area with a very high water pH which causes StarSan to become cloudy and lose its effectiveness. How can I get my local water supply in good enough shape to use the StarSan and not create a toxic soup with water additions?
 
Check your local grocery store and buy distilled water. I mix up a batch of five gallons of distilled water and StarSan in a old fermenting bucket. Last for several months. I think it cost about 5 dollars for the distilled water.
 
My humble two cents:

1) Always thoroughly dish-soap (non-scented) and rinse my bottles out after drinking
2) On the day before bottling, I run the bottles through the dishwasher, no detergent
3) Morning of bottling day: since I always have a simple spray-bottle w/StarSan solution handy, I upside-down spray into the bottles; 4 quick pumps as I slightly swirl each bottle. A quick upside down shake to evenly distribute and shed excess foam, then back into the bottle case, done. I can methodically pound out 48 bottles in under 10 minutes this way, music playing and me humming along.

Being consistent with this method, I never spend too much time at any one point working on cleaning/sanitizing bottles (5-10 min work-time, at most, for each of the above steps), and have thus far avoided the "bottling-as-major-headache" thing.

Hope it's going well for you!

EC
 
Back
Top